Trying to Improve Silence by Sentences

A Guide

With complicated and experimental pieces of music there is sometimes a disconnect. It isn’t that I don’t like the piece, it’s that I don’t understand it. I’m lost within the atonality, the brash timbres, the jagged edges. These features make up musical cities in which I don’t know the language, let alone the culture.

But that’s what a guide is for, right? A guide will let you in on the culture and history of the city. A guide will lead you to understanding what the city is about.

Before we judge a piece as over our heads, why don’t we enlist in a guide? Whether it be found in writing, through a friend or teacher, at a concert, through multiple listenings, having a guide can help us understand this music.

And once we have an extended stay in this city, we can judge whether it suits our fancy. Even if it doesn’t, you at least went through with the effort of learning about it.

Hell, it might even help you when you travel to another sonic destination.